WHEN Rania Ajami sets her mind on something, she’s not to be deterred.

Most of her teachers at NYU film school ad vised against going to Libya to make a documentary about the women on Moammar Khadafy’s security detail – “They thought I was being overambitious.”

She went anyway.

The result is “Khadafy’s Female Bodyguards: Shadows of a Leader,” a fascinating portrait of women – from teens to grandmothers – who volunteer to guard the dictator.

“In the West we always conceive of Muslim women as veiled victims,” Ajami, 25, told Cine File at the Montreal World Film Festival.

“The phenomenon of these bodyguards completely topples this image. I wanted to investigate and see how much is image and how much is reality.”

Born in the United States of Lebanese parents, Ajami grew up in London and graduated from Princeton before going to NYU.

* Her documentary was one of 439 films from 72 countries to unreel in the friendly French-Canadian city.

One of the most bizarre was”Suburbs,” from Slovenian helmer Vink Moderndorfer.

It’s all about four male bowling buddies whose idea of public service is rounding up stray dogs and shooting them to death.

When a young man and woman move in next door, the four secretly film them making love. What starts as a prank gradually turns vicious.

Grab this one if it ever comes to New York.

* While Montreal doesn’t go in for the Hollywood star power found at the rival Toronto festival, it usually attracts a few “names.”

Ageless French beauty Isabelle Adjani accepted one of those lifetime-achivement awards, taking the opportunity to criticize Canadian whale hunting as “an act of barbarism.”

Penelope Cruz showed up to plug the sex-filled Italian movie”Don’t Move,” in which she plays a gap-tooth hotel maid who has an affair with a married surgeon (Sergio Castellitto, who directed, too).

While surly rent-a-cops (who acted as if they were guarding the GOP convention) and other minders looked on, Cruz uttered platitudes like: “I couldn’t stop crying when I read the script.”

* This year’s edition of the Montreal festival, the 28th, probably marked the end of an era.

A government report has strongly criticized fest founder and chief Serge Losique for his prickly and opaque operation of the event.

As a result, the fest could lose its government funding and even its corporate sponsorship.

“The best-case scenario is that Losique will gracefully accept a role as ‘founder emeritus’ and let other hands carry the event through the 21st century,” critic John Griffin wrote in the city’s English-language daily, the Gazette.

“The worst is that he would rather kill his own creation than see it slip from his fingers.”

V.A. Musetto is film editor of The Post. He can be e-mailed at vam@nypost.com